Spending 4 weeks living in a hotel room in a different city is nothing new to me. This time though I had the opportunities to learn new skills and apply some of my knowledge in different and unique ways.
The first week was dedicated to search and rescue training with an emphasis on rescue training using double rope technique and was practiced on a moderate slope in the suburbs of Hobart.
After a few days of theory and practical SAR training, Myself and 1 other person flew to Melbourne where we spent 2 days at ARPANSA.
ARPANSA is a government body that is responsible for radiation protection and nuclear safety. Why did we go there I hear you ask, well Australia is a signatory for the treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. As part of the treaty there is a network of monitoring stations around the work and Australia has 2 located in Antarctica and 1 on Macquarie Island. There are several methods used conduct monitoring including air sampling, infrasound monitoring and underwater monitoring. As part of the training I learnt how to run the air sampling equipment as well as conduct maintenance on it. At Casey though, I only have UV monitoring and there are some projects surrounding that so this is the primary reason as to why I was at ARPANSA.
Week 2 was all about RF training. This included testing and calibrating radios from the handheld radios everyone has to vehicle mounted radios all the way up to 1Kw HF radios that are used. We learnt about the different types of power systems used to run all the remote repeaters as well as all if the radios on station. We covered the may different types of antenna that are used and how the location and temperature affects radio propagation and equipment life. This week was also the week to finalise all the stuff that I wanted to send down with me for the year including alcohol and any thing for hobbies etc.
Week 3 was spent in Canberra with Geoscience Australia. There are several things they do down in Antarctica and that we need to support throughout the year. The main one is doing geomagnetic observations to calibrate the automatic monitoring with. I will go into more detail on this in a future post. There is also seismic monitoring and other bits and pieces that occur there as well. The training that was done in Canberra covered all the different bits of Equipment that we would come across as well as any work that is planned for the year and what might go wrong with it and how to fix it.
Week 4 The final week before departure. We covered off more systems including the ANARESAT system, IT system and photocopier repair and maintenance. We had to strip down one of the photocopiers at head office and put it all back and make sure it worked. If we weren’t able to print anything at the end of the day then we failed. Luckily for us, all the work that we did on it meant that it went back together and we didn’t have any screws or random parts leftover unless someone threw them in the back of the machine without anyone else noticing.